Taphonomy

Fiction by Kelsie Hahn

Lady Gaga Triceratops wants to be big. She used to be a demure little thing with a guitar, but that went nowhere so now she’s rolled her horns in squid ink and wrapped herself in plastic tubing that makes her legs look somehow broken and she wants more. “I need the exposure,” she tells her agent, and she climbs into a limo without putting panties on first. She shoves her head through the moon roof, shattering the glass, screams for faster faster faster, throws vinyl shoes and wine corks to the crowds. They will know her name.

But poor Lady Gaga Triceratops, the limo crashes and explodes and it’s on the wrong kind of rock and her body melts away and there’s nothing left for the paleontologists to find.

Now the ghost of Lady Gaga Triceratops taps on the walls and chills columns of air as she wanders a twilit world of university storage lockers. She hovers over some lonely unemployable grad student who fell in love with Spielberg's Jurassic Park and now can't bear to watch it.

She brushes his spine as gently as he brushes the fossil in his gloved hand. A hush, hush, hush fills the room, trembling its acoustical hollows. The barest touch. The warm awareness of another.